1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information displaying/reproducing device capable of displaying management information recorded on an information storage medium, an information editing device capable of efficiently editing the management information, and an information recording device provided with a device for imparting track number information for each track recorded on an information storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an information recording medium in which music information and image information are recorded, a tape shaped information recording medium represented by a cassette tape, a DAT (digital audio tape), 8 mm tape and the like, and a disc information recording medium represented by an LD (laser disc), a CD (compact disc), an MD (mini disc), a DVD (digital versatile disc) and the like are known.
In recent years, writing and rewriting of information have been made possible in the disc information recording medium, and it has been. remarkably spread combined with an advantage of quick access to the recorded information.
When music (hereinafter, simply described as “tune”) is recorded in the disc information recording medium, one tune is made to be a unit called a “track”, for example, and it can be controlled by attaching track number information. Such track number information is included in control information called a TOC (Table of content) recorded in the innermost peripheral part of the disc together with information to control recording data such as a disc name, a tune name, a tune number, a total playing time, a starting position and an ending position of the tune on the disc (a starting time and an ending time in the case of controlling the position by time information) and the like. When a user reproduces a recorded song, he/she can operate the recording/reproducing editing apparatus for a disc and select a recorded song by specifying such track number information. Such management information is displayed on, e.g., a display unit of the disc recording/reproducing device. Further, in case of reproducing a recorded song, the user can select the recorded song by specifying track number information displayed on the display unit or a song name.
Meanwhile, with improvement in the information recording density to the disc type information storage medium or establishment of a new information compression mode, a number of songs which can be recorded on one disc type information storage medium can be outstandingly increased. For example, in case of the MD, there has been conventionally adopted an information compression mode called ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding). In recent years, however, an MDLP standard for performing information recording by an information compression mode referred to as ATRAC3 having the twofold or fourfold compression efficiency of that of the conventional mode has been established. According to this ATRAC3, in the MD whose normal recording time is 80 minutes, up to 320-minute recording is enabled in the fourfold mode. According to such a new information compression mode, even if the time of one song is approximately five minutes, approximately 60 songs can be recorded on the disc.
When a very large number of songs can be recorded in this manner, however, selecting a song displayed on the display unit takes a lot of troubles when a user reproduces a recorded song. As a countermeasure, there has been proposed a method by which a user can collect one or a plurality of songs to form a group and manage songs in accordance with each group (which will be referred to as “group management” hereinafter). In such group management, information such as the same group name is given to songs belonging to the same group, and the information such as a group name is recorded at the innermost circumference portion of the disc as group management information together with the track number information. Furthermore, for example, when the disc is inserted into a disc recording/reproducing device, the group management information is read from the disc and displayed in a group selection screen of the display unit. When a user specifies a desired group on the group selection screen, a screen for selecting a song belonging to that group or the like is displayed. Therefore, since the user can first specify a desired group and then select a song belonging to that group, a song can be efficiently selected.
If a number of songs to be recorded is small, however, it is not necessary to venture to conduct group management, and whether group management is performed is decided by a selection of a user. Therefore, both a disc on which the Group management information is recorded and a disc having no such information recorded thereon exist, and it can be considered that judgment must be rapidly made upon whether it is a disc under group management. Moreover, for example, when a disc having the group management information recorded thereon is inserted into the disk recording/reproducing device, it can be considered that the group selection screen displaying no group management information is displayed. In such a case, a user must perform the unproductive operation, namely, switching to another screen each time.
In addition, when a very large number of songs can be recorded in this way, it is extremely difficult for a user to memorize the correspondence relationship of the track number information and songs Therefore, when editing a reproduction order of songs or the like, a user gets confused, resulting in excessive operation loads.
Additionally, when a very large number of songs can be recorded in this manner, decision on a recording order of songs or management of recorded songs becomes very troublesome. For example, in case of dubbing songs in various genres (for example, rock, pops, classical and others) from a plurality of CDs to one MD, it can be usually considered that a user collects and records desired songs in accordance with each genre. At this moment, however, determining a reproduction order of respective genres or a reproduction order of songs in each genre in advance is burdensome. Further, even if recording is performed in the predetermined reproduction order of the respective genres or the predetermined reproduction order of songs, a user may thereafter possibly change the reproduction order of the respective genres or that of the songs. If such an order is changed, excessive operation loads are given to the user.